es relaxed: he thought that the worries
and hardships of that day, at least, were over.

But he was wrong.

No sooner had his Platoon wearily thrown their rifles and equipment into
the musty barn that was allotted to them, than the Colonel told him that
he would have to sleep with his men, the reason being that the owner of
the farm, on the approach of the Germans, had hidden a large stock of
brandy beneath the straw in the very barn that his men had entered. The
farmer had asked the Colonel to save his liquor from the troops, and the
Colonel, with horrible visions of a regiment unmanageable and madly
intoxicated before his eyes, replied that most assuredly he would see
that the men did not get hold of the brandy. The Subaltern told his
sergeant, but otherwise the proximity of bliss was kept a strict secret
from the men.

Throughout the whole of that long day the Subaltern had been looking
forward to, longing for, and idealising the rest which was to follow
after the labours of the day. And now that it had at last been achieved,
it proved to be a very poor imitation of the ideal rest and slumber that
he had been yearning for. To begin with, the delays before quarters were
settled upon were interminable. And then this news about the brandy. The
evening meal was delayed almost a couple of hours, and every minute of
the delay annoyed him, because it was so much precious time for sleep
lost. Even when the meal arrived, it proved to be insufficient, and he
was still hungry, cold and damp, when at last he hobbled across the yard
to the barn.

The place had no ventilation. The air was foul with the smell of damp
grain, and men, and wet boots. He hesitated at the door; he would rather
have slept in the open air, but the yard was inches deep in mud and
manure. He groped forward, and at every inch that he penetrated further
into the place, the air seemed to become thicker, more humid, more foul.
In the thick darkness his foot stumbled on the sleeping form of a man,
who rolled over and swore drowsily. At last, after interminable feeling
in the darkness, and balancing himself on sacks of grain, he attained
the corner where the bottles lay buried, and threw himself down to
sleep.

But sleep was impossible. In spite of the insupportable atmosphere he
remained cold. Every second some one was moving! One instant a man would
shuffle and cough in one corner, then some one would grunt and groan as
he turned restlessly in his sleep,